Survival of the Timeliest-Can Unlicensed LPWA beat NB-IoT?

CAMPBELL, Calif., July 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Mobile Experts has finally released their conclusions on the LPWA market. Where other IoT predictions have relied mostly on speculation, Mobile Experts has broken the broad IoT marketplace into small vertical market slices in order to fully understand the priorities of end users. After two years of research, Mobile Experts now has accurate, fact-based conclusions about the growing competition between unlicensed LPWA and the evolution of Cellular IoT.

For two years, Mobile Experts has held back from releasing any definitive conclusions regarding LPWA devices. Instead, their analysts tucked in to a thorough investigation of the IoT market, breaking it up into a series of vertical markets and then analyzing each in its entirety. Over 300 pages of analysis and hundreds of diagrams provided a strong basis for a fully vetted forecast.

"Some of the claims about this market in the high billions and trillions are just so impossible to meet that we've all learned to ignore them," commented Principal Analyst Joe Madden. "That's why we held back. We've never been afraid to get our hands dirty, so have spent the time to interview hundreds of companies. We've talked to all of the major auto manufacturers, and building automation providers, and smart meter suppliers. We've interviewed industrial companies like GE and Siemens, as well as hospital groups like Kaiser and United Healthcare. Each vertical market has very different drivers…there is no 'typical IoT device' and no 'typical IoT business model'. Now that we've covered the most established vertical markets, we have some conclusions to present."

Part of that research involved the technical and business factors for each technology. Mobile Experts considered technical factors such as range, building penetration, device density, capacity, battery life, and cost. In each vertical market segment, the analysts considered the preferred ownership structure, the ROI for the end user, and time to market for customization and ease-of-use features.

This report provides a five-year forecast for LTE-M, NB-IoT, Sigfox, LoRa, Ingenu, Telensa, 802.15.4 (Silver Spring), and other formats. The report provides a main conclusion about which formats will grow to hundreds of millions of devices and why.

"The short answer is that only a few of the unlicensed LPWA options can thrive, because the breakeven point on a widespread IoT network is difficult to reach. Out of about 10 unlicensed LPWA options, we expect one to grow as a robust, broad ecosystem and two others to occupy niche opportunities. Some features of formats like Dash7 or Qowisio are useful, and can be absorbed into other technology roadmaps. Others are likely to die," remarked Principal Analyst Joe Madden.

This report also provides detailed information for suppliers in the IoT market, with a forecast of module and semiconductor shipments and revenue. According to Mobile Experts, connectivity module revenue will grow from about $1B in 2016 to about $33B in 2021, with volume growth in multiple markets clearly overcoming the drop in device pricing. At a semiconductor level, the revenue for MCUs and RF solutions will grow to more than $1B by 2021.